Finnish bitcoin services provider, Prasos, has lost all but one of its banking partners. Prasos’ chief executive officer recently revealed that four Finnish banks have terminated services with the company, leaving Prasos reliant on a single bank.
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Finnish Banks Terminate Services With Prasos
According to the company’s website, Prasos provides its customers with a number of cryptocurrency-related services, including facilitating the purchase and sale of bitcoin. After losing the services of S-Bank, the OP Group, Saastopankki and Nordea Bank AB, the company now relies on a single banking institution in order to maintain operations.
Henry Brade, Prasos’ chief executive officer, has attributed the company’s banking woes to the dramatic recent rise in the popularity of of cryptocurrencies. “We’ve realized that the growth in international transaction volumes started to disturb the banks,” Mr. Brade recently told . Mr. Brade stated that Prasos had witness growth in transaction volume of almost 1,000% when comparing the company’s performance in 2017 to that of the preceding year.
Mr. Brade also blamed the lack of regulatory clarity with regards to cryptocurrencies for exacerbating perceptions of risk associated with businesses operating in the cryptocurrency industry, concluding that the company is currently hoping that regulators will soon develop a clear legislative apparatus that boosts confidence in bitcoin businesses among financial institutions.
Prasos CEO Fears Total Loss of Banking Partners
Amid the increasing regulatory actions targeting the cryptocurrency industry, Mr. Brade states that Prasos has sought to take greater steps to ensure regulatory compliance. “We’ve created identification practices, which we have taken into use in March, and they comply fully with anti-money laundering laws and regulations, even though authorities do not even require this from us as our business is not under regulatory obligations […] Along the way, we’ve been given very little information by the banks on what we could do to solve the problem.”
Hanna Heiskanen, a senior adviser at Finland’s Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA) in Helsinki, has stated that “Cryptocurrency trading places are not currently under the regulatory mandate of the Finnish FSA,” adding that Prasos’ troubles are “an affair between the company and the bank[s].”
“The risk is that we’ll see our last bank account closed before we can get the next one opened,” said Mr. Brade. “That would freeze our business.”
What is your reaction to the increasing reluctance of banking institutions regarding partnering with companies that operate in the cryptocurrency industry? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!
Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Prasos
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While trading of crypto-assets is booming, some investors are looking for options to trade traditional assets like stocks via cryptocurrencies. Three new operators are among those developing trading platforms to meet this need, with blockchain-based tokens pegged to the underlying assets.
Ankorus
is establishing a platform that will permit trading traditional assets, including stocks, bonds, futures, options, gold, silver, commodities, ETFs, FX and bitcoin futures with cryptocurrency.
“Ankorus will establish an online exchange populated by any financial asset currently available worldwide,” reads the . “Various auditing measures will be taken to establish transparency, and customers will be able to validate that tokenised assets are fully backed and held by Ankorus.”
To enable cryptocurrency holders to buy real-world financial assets, Ankorus will create and allocate that are exactly value-pegged to the underlying assets in exchange for cryptocurrency.
Ankorus will hold its “fundraising contribution” or “Token Generation Event” (TGE) between November 25 and December 25. The ANK token will be distributed to contributors during the TGE.
“The ANK is a utility token, used for commissions, for datafeeds, professional technical charting software, webinars, financial education materials and also,” Ankorus CEO John Cruz told bitcoin Magazine. “The ANK token will be allocated during our TGE and later listed on exchanges, beginning with EtherDelta. It is an ERC20 token.”
Another token, the Anchor Token, will be the asset value-pegged token, separately created to tokenize specific securities using a yet-to-be-determined technology.
“Anchor Tokens will come later, after we receive the requisite regulatory approval,” said Cruz. “Anchor Tokens will be created for our customers when they wish to tokenize specific assets. For example, if a customer wishes to purchase and tokenize Apple stock, we create an Apple Anchor Token (known as AAPL.A) or simply credit the customer with them if we created one earlier.”
One of the most interesting asset classes that Ankorus is targeting is that of traditional financial instruments based on cryptocurrencies, such as futures and derivatives. A few weeks ago Magazine
reported that, one of the world’s largest derivatives exchanges, will launch a bitcoin futures product before the end of Q4 2017. In , Cruz explains why he considers CME bitcoin futures as a breakthrough that could soon push bitcoin’s price up to $50,000, and expresses confidence in Ankorus’s ability to offer CME bitcoin futures trading soon.
It’s worth noting that Ankorus’s offering can be seen as the reverse of CME bitcoin futures: while CME will offer a traditional financial instrument tied to cryptocurrencies to investors that prefer not to hold and trade cryptocurrencies directly, Ankorus wants to make CME bitcoin futures and other traditional financial instruments available to cryptocurrency holders.
One is left to wonder how Ankorus will navigate the compliance minefield, which has blocked similar initiatives before. The Ankorus team insists that they will be totally SEC-compliant and follow all KYC (Know Your Customer), AML (Anti-Money Laundering) and CTF (Counter-Terrorist Financing) regulations. According to the white paper, Ankorus intends to become a fully registered broker-dealer, acquire membership on a large and reputable exchange, follow best practices for insurance and auditing on a regular basis, and establish a compliant trading platform that will bridge the crypto and finance worlds.
“By becoming a broker-dealer entity, we will get SEC blessing,” . “Everyone else is trying to tokenize assets by not being a broker-dealer entity; this is where they run into trouble with the SEC.”
“Within the team we have experience of complying with different market regulators’ KYC, AML and CTF requirements for an FX remittance company,” Ankorus COO Haldane Marnoch told bitcoin Magazine. “PEP [Politically Exposed Persons] lists are vetted and we check against a suite of sanctions lists too. Documents supplied by our customers for proof of identity or proof of address expire and need to be renewed on a regular basis. Source of funds also needs to be proven for larger transactions.
“Our team is familiar with all the provisions required for operating across multiple jurisdictions,” continued Marnoch. “We’ll use as our primary reference the standards set by the SEC and the CFTC, but naturally we’ll be implementing processes to comply with each and every market we trade in, for instance the FCA in the U.K.”
“We will become a division of a Futures Commissions Merchant (FCM), expected early March, and will be able to fill orders for CME bitcoin futures at that time,” added Cruz.
LAToken and Jibrel Network
(LAT), which recently in a token sale, wants to broaden the use of cryptocurrencies in the real economy and allow cryptocurrency holders to diversify their portfolio by getting access to tokens linked to the price of real assets.
The LAT platform is already operational: asset tokens can be created, listed for sale and traded on the LAT platform. At this time, tokens linked to the price of stocks (e.g., Apple, Amazon, Tesla), commodities (oil, gold, silver) and real estate are already being traded on the LAT platform. Tokens linked to artwork are soon to follow.
According to the , the LAT platform provides cryptocurrency holders with transparent price discovery and diversification across multiple asset classes, allowing for the creation or listing of third-party asset tokens compliant with LAToken disclosure and legal structure rules.
wants to provide currencies, equities, commodities and other financial assets and instruments as standard ERC20 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain.
Jibrel Network’s draft explains that the platform will support tokens, dubbed Crypto Depository Receipts (CryDRs), which represent ownership of an underlying traditional asset held by Jibrel. On release, Jibrel will support six fiat currencies (USD, CNY, EUR, GBP, RUB, AED) and two money-market instruments.
In the future, Jibrel plans offer CryDRs pegged to a wide range of currencies, commodities, securities and derivatives. The project will hold a token pre-sale between November 27 and January 27.
Both LAToken and Jibrel Network expect to be fully compliant with applicable regulations, including KYC/AML rules, and apply for relevant licenses where needed. Full compliance may prevent the companies from targeting customers in certain jurisdictions. For example, the Jibrel token sale will not be available to U.S., Chinese and Singaporean residents.
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According to the company’s website, Prasos provides its customers with a number of cryptocurrency-related services, including facilitating the purchase and sale of bitcoin. After losing the services of S-Bank, the OP Group, Saastopankki and Nordea Bank AB, the company now relies on a single banking institution in order to maintain operations.
Amid the increasing regulatory actions targeting the cryptocurrency industry, Mr. Brade states that Prasos has sought to take greater steps to ensure regulatory compliance. “We’ve created identification practices, which we have taken into use in March, and they comply fully with anti-money laundering laws and regulations, even though authorities do not even require this from us as our business is not under regulatory obligations […] Along the way, we’ve been given very little information by the banks on what we could do to solve the problem.”
